The Inbox Runneth Over -- The Policy Papers -- Issue #5

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Genesis

In the beginning, Ethan created The STEEM Engine -- and the vision was simple.

• Members would comment and upvote the posts of two other members as their qualification to put their post in our post-promo channel.
• Members would put their posts in our post-promo channel.
• Every night I would assemble and publish a group post -- the best of the day's contributions.
• We would reward those posts nicely with upvotes from our group account -- and we would give reasonable upvotes (mostly funded by Ethan) to everyone else.
• Members would give us one 100% upvote a day as their contribution to supporting our group.
• Members would benefit from the upvotes of other members -- and the comment requirement would encourage engagement.
• We would grow because by supporting quality content on Steemit, those accounts would prosper and, in turn, be better able to support us and our mission.

Sounds so reasonable on the surface. Which I suppose is why it didn't work out.

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But it's still a good thought.

I think the vision itself is still sound -- especially if we keep the group small and focus on putting out a group post full of content worth reading. Virtually everyone who is still here has shown they can contribute to that. And even with Steem swirling around in the toilet we can still give upvotes that are not to be sneezed at. We ought to be doing better than we are -- and maybe part of that is my fault. In any case, I'm ready to take responsibility for fixing it.

In my investigation of just what's going on and why our post-payouts have become so dismal they're hardly worth my time doing, I uncovered some disappointing surprises. One reason, of course, is that the price of Steem has tanked. Another is that former members either less hardy or wiser than we are have chosen to abandon the platform.

Another is that our request for a 100% upvote a day sometimes didn't stick past the first week. We let that slide (a whole lot longer than we should have) in the interests of not embarrassing anyone, not upsetting anyone, not discouraging anyone, not "making waves" if we could avoid it. But the practice became epidemic.

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Every time I think I see daylight ... BAAMM!!

There's a psychological truth that says: What you reward -- or even tolerate -- is what you'll get more of.

You see that in evidence everywhere.

So a standard part of my job now is keeping much better track of that -- and bringing it up as required. Another complication is that some of our members have nice chubby upvotes -- and some don't. This is why I introduced the policy of a $.06 upvote from those who can afford that -- and 100% upvote from those who can't. (Part of our mission, as I see it, it to help you grow your account until you can contribute at that level.)

That seemed to solve that problem ... until ...

Honestly, the thought of someone delegating out big chunks of SP to other projects, etc., didn't cross my mind until a returning member with a $.00 at 100% upvote caught my eye ... and suddenly that brought up a whole new wrinkle. I honestly don't know a good way to handle this. I've hashed it over with The Weasel this week-end until he's sick of hearing about it. Sometimes I think I'm too naive even to have this job in the first place. (And that thought has become mighty tempting -- but anyway ....)

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New Rule -- in my best Bill Maher voice

Here's what I've come up with on that score -- and if anyone can offer better suggestions, I'm happy to listen.

• If you can meet your commitment of a $.06 upvote a day (or equivalent) here -- and you have SP to play with well above that ... what you do with the extra is none of my business. My concern is the support of TSE. Period. (Realize this $.06 minimum is apt to rise in the future -- especially when Steem rises again. Not if. When. So when I adjust this -- it won't be a surprise.)

• Soooo, if your SP can give us a $.06 / day upvote, please make sure that happens. Seven days a week. (If your autovote service goes down or you're manually voting and miss a day, please go back and catch up. This is part of being a responsible member.) I'm looking for a total of $.42 in upvote values a week from our richest members.

• We're giving out $.25+ upvote totals w/ the TSE vote, Ethan's trail, and our curation trail, plus what you get from me, the other members, etc. If you post twice a week with content I can feature you should more than break even. If for some reason you need to throw a few cents more into the kitty ... you can always to go one of the recently featured posts and upvote the TSE comment I leave every time. Those count, too. TSE does have a Dustsweeper account. But Dustsweeper will upvote only 2 comments a day. In other words, don't make "the least amount I can possibly get away with" guide your choices.

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... continued

• The tool I use to check these totals is here. https://mysteemitfriends.online/upvotelist.php I go back 8 days in case "today's totals" haven't come in yet. I need to see $.42 in that box -- starting next week. That's the bottom line. It can come from any of the places I've mentioned. Otherwise, if your content is selected for TDWS, your upvote from TSE will be "adjusted." (Also, keep in mind your ~$.06 upvote may not come in at that if your VP is down when your autovoter votes us. You might want to give yourself some elbow room.)

• If you're not able to give us a $.06 upvote because you're SP isn't that large yet -- (You need about 1250 ATM.) -- then we want 100% of what your total SP should be able to give us. If you've divested your account down through delegations to other projects and accounts to where your current vote is based on 50 SP, for example, your value in upvotes to the other members is basically worthless -- and so is your continuing membership in TSE. You'll need to see about rejoining when you've built up your account again to a reasonable level.

• If your delegations have not crippled your account completely but they have substantially reduced the value of your upvote to us and the members -- your TSE upvotes will also be "adjusted." I'm not trying to be hateful. But TSE simply has got to get its financial house in order -- for everyone's sake. Your membership in TSE may not be worth it to you under these new conditions. (Honestly, you do not have to belong here!! There's no law that says that!)

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... continued

• If these other projects are worth more to you -- for whatever reason -- that's fine. Support them however you like. (But I don't spend 3 - 8 hours a day on TSE business so that this group can try to subsist on crumbs and left-overs. If we're not worth this level of support to you -- and only you can decide that -- then perhaps we can find new members who feel differently -- and build on the support they can provide.)

• Again, I value you all. I just don't know how to handle this differently. (As I said, if you have some better thoughts and suggestions, please speak up.) I've been placed in a position of having to make some difficult choices in the interests of fairness to everyone. I have given all this a lot of thought ... and I have not reached these conclusions lightly. (Again, talk to The Weasel. He's sick of the subject.)

I still have more to say -- as soon as I can get it written. I still have not heard from quite a few people -- to say they've caught up on these announcements. So I will be addressing that point real soon. FYI -- we're down to 41 members now. And we may drop quite a few more. Remember what I said a while back. ATM, smaller is better -- for those that remain. And I have given a lot of thought to that, too..

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At last ... the end (for now)

I think there will be only one or two more "fussy" posts. By then, I expect we'll know who's here and who isn't -- and I can talk about the good stuff for a change. I look forward to it. For now, we're farther along than when we started.

One last point. If you have delegated out small amounts of SP to open alternate accounts for yourself, that's fine. I'm not worried about that. If you want to submit the content of these alt accounts to our post-promo channel, that's fine, too. But those alt accounts need to be upvoting TSE as I've already outlined.

Any questions? You know where to find me.